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Indiana GOP Candidate Complains No One Will Allow Poor People to 'Wither and Die'

John Johnston, a GOP candidate who is challenging Indiana State Rep. Chuck Moseley (D), recently lamented that no politician has the courage to allow poor people to "wither and die.”

Johnston reportedly posted this statement on the Facebook page of Madmac, which comments on Northwest Indiana politics:

For almost three generations people, in some cases, have been given handouts. They have been ‘enabled’ so much that their paradigm in life is simply being given the stuff of life, however meager. What you see is a setting for a life of misery is life to them never-the-less. No one has the guts to just let them wither and die. No one who wants votes is willing to call a spade a spade.

As long as the Dems can get their votes the enabling will continue. The Republicans need their votes and dare not cut the fiscal tether. It is really a political Catch-22. The voters are the ones in charge. however when only 10-11 percent show up to vote, not much will change. People simply are not hurting enough, or simply happy enough that they will do nothing. consequently the dole continues.

“I was not trying to hurt anybody’s feelings,” Johnston told the Post-Tribune. “I saw the opportunity to say something. I think a lot of the poor have no way out, and there’s no motivation to improve your position. It’s like training a child, either you enable them or force them out at some point.”

“My main point is that the programs are used as political tools,” added Johnston. “Sometimes it hurts, but you might give them less to motivate someone to get a job.”

However, Johnston made no mention of the billions in corporate welfare that go to American companies.

A report this year from the taxpayer watchdog group Good Jobs First found that $110 billion of corporate welfare went to big companies. Fortune 500 companies received more than 16,000 subsidies that cost taxpayers $63 billion.

Many of the world’s largest companies aren’t self-sufficient, but are rather propped up by billions of dollars in corporate welfare.